lbows and with fat faces inclined on their hands
consider mortals from cemetery monuments. Then dull concussions arrived
from heaven, and right overhead I made out two German 'planes. A
shell-case banged the _pave_ and went on to make a white scar on a wall.
Some invisible things were whizzing about. One's own shrapnel can be
tactless.

There was a cellar near and I got into it, and while the intruders were
overhead I smoked and gazed at the contents of the cellar--the wreckage
of a bicycle, a child's chemise, one old boot, a jam-pot, and a dead cat.
Owing to an unsatisfactory smell of many things I climbed out as soon as
possible and sat on the pedestal again.

A figure in khaki came straight at me across the Square, its boots
sounding like the deliberate approach of Fate in solitude. It stopped and
saluted, and said: "I shouldn't stay 'ere, sir. They gen'ally begin about
now. Sure to drop some 'ere."

At that moment a mournful cry went over us, followed by a crash in
Sinister Street. My way home! Some masonry fell in sympathy from the
Cloth Hall.

"Better come with me till it blows over, sir. I've got a dug-out near."

We turned off into a part of the city unknown to me. There were some
unsettling noises, worse, no doubt, because of the echoes behind us; but
it is not dignified to hurry when one looks like an officer. One ought to
fill a pipe. I did so, and stopped to light it. I paused while drawing at
it, checked by the splitting open of the earth in the first turning to
the right and the second to the left, or thereabouts.

"That's a big 'un, sir," said my soldier, taking half a cigarette from
behind his ear and a light from my match; we then resumed our little
promenade. By an old motor 'bus having boards for windows, and War Office
neuter for its colour, but bearing for memory's sake on its brow the
legend "Liverpool Street," my soldier hurried slightly, and was then
swallowed up. I was alone. While looking about for possible openings I
heard his voice under the road, and then saw a dark cavity, low in a
broken wall, and crawled in. Feeling my way by knocking on the dark with
my forehead and my shins, I descended to a lower smell of graves which
was hollowed by a lighted candle in a bottle. And there was the soldier,
who provided me with an empty box, and himself with another, and we had
the candle between us. On the table were some official documents under a
shell-nose, and a tin of condensed milk sufferin